IT Manager's Handbook: Getting Your New Job Done Read Online Free PDF Page A

your staff: These are the individuals (employees, consultants, even vendor representatives) in the organization that report into you.

    Figure 1.1  Managing in four directions.
    In all four of these directions, you’re dealing with similar issues: setting expectations, developing relationships, aligning goals and strategies, demonstrating leadership as well as management, and so on. However, each of them has a different twist, too. For example, you set expectations differently when you manage up than when you are managing your staff. In the former, you’re helping set a frame of reference for your management as to what they should expect, from you, from technology, and from your team. You are also outlining what you’ll need from them (support, resources, etc.). When you set expectations for your staff, you are defining objectives for them, and holding them accountable. Similarly, aligning goals is something you would do in all four directions, but you would do them with a different approach and at different levels with each direction.
    1.3 The Strategic Value of the IT Department
    IT has become one of the most critical functions in the economy of the new century. As corporations have embraced the efficiencies and excitement of the new digital economy, IT and IT professionals have grown dramatically in value. IT is no longer “just” a department, no longer an isolated island like the MIS departments of old corporations where requests for data would flow in and emerge, weeks or months later, in some long, unreadable report. Many companies now make IT an integral part of their company, of their mission statement s, and of their spending. Your role is more critical than ever before.
The CEO’s Role in IT

First, the CEO must be sure to regard information technology as a strategic resource to help the business get more out of its people. Second, the CEO must learn enough about technology to be able to ask good, hard questions of the CIO and be able to tell whether good answers are coming back. Third, the CEO needs to bring the CIO into management’s deliberations and strategizing. It’s impossible to align IT strategy with business strategy if the CIO is out of the business loop.
—Bill Gates
Business @ the Speed of Thought
    Application Development versus Technical Operations
    Most IT organizations have two primary functional areas: Applications Development and Technical Operations.
    Application Development
    Companies often see the real value of IT as only the applications that serve the company’s core business. Applications are what allow one business to become innovative, more efficient, and more productive and set itself apart from its competitors. Careers within applications development include analysts, programmers, database administrators, interface designers, and testers, among others.
    Many people within IT like working in application development because it allows them to learn how the business operates. As a result, it may often provide opportunities for increased involvement with people in other departments outside of IT. However, many programmers find the job is too isolating because their daily interactions may only be with the program logic displayed on their screen and the keyboard; they don’t like being only “keyboard jockeys.” Of course, other programmers welcome the isolation and embrace the opportunity to work in relative seclusion.
    Technical Operations
    The technical support function is the oft-forgotten area of IT. The Technical Operations organization is responsible for making sure that the computers are up and operating as they should. Their jobs go well beyond the computer hardware and include the network (routers, switches, telecommunication facilities, etc.), data center, operations, security, backups, operating systems , and so on. The Help Desk may be the most visible portion of the Technical Operations group. Within the industry, this infrastructure side of IT is often referred to as